STORM considered Chairman Mao Zedong as their spiritual leader. Mao was the leader of Communist China for 27 years, during which 35 to 70 million people lost their lives to government abuse/murder, as well as starvation from Mao’s insane economic policies.

STORM also is an atheist organization with a deep dislike of religion.

Here are Van Jones’ actual words that altogether make up my ongoing effort to compile “The Political Thought of Van Jones.”

~Eowyn

………….

From an interview Van Jones made with the left-wing magazine Mother Jones, in its November/December 2008 issue:

On environmental racism: “…right now…incinerators, dumping grounds, and sacrifice zones were put where poor people live. It would never have been allowed if you had to put all the incinerators and nasty stuff in rich people’s neighborhoods…. It’s the environmental racism that allowed the powerful people in society to turn a blind eye for decades to the downsides of the industrial system that got us to this point…. We were the canaries in the coal mines, crying for relief. Now finally the consequences are affecting everyone, with global warming and everything else.”

On environmental justice: “Environmental justice is the movement to ensure that no community suffers disproportionate environmental burdens or goes without enjoying fair environmental benefits…. Now we are also demanding equal opportunity and equal access to environmental good. We don’t want to be first and worst with all the toxins and all the negative effects of global warming, and then benefit last and least from all the breakthroughs in solar, wind energy, organic food, all the positives. We want an equal share, an equitable share, of the work wealth and the benefits of the transition to a green economy.”

“There’s going to be a lot of jobs weatherizing buildings, putting up solar panels, manufacturing parts for wind turbines and wind towers. All that’s work, and we want to make sure that the green economy is an equal-opportunity, diverse economy that can lift millions of people out of poverty. We don’t want it to be an ecoapartheid economy where the vast majority of the owners and workers and consumers and beneficiaries of the green economy are all one race.”

On President George W. Bush: “You may have noticed there’s this jackass in the White House that’s not letting anything happen, whether you’re talking about health care or getting out of the war or fixing the energy crisis or solving global warming or getting the economy to work.”

On green jobs: “Now, the real question is who’s going to get those jobs. …the jobs question is critical, justice is critical, equal opportunity is critical, and pathways out of poverty are critical. …with the Silicon Valley tech boom, communities of color, poor people got nothing out of it. By the time we got into the argument, to talk about ‘Let’s close the digital divide,’ the only thing Silicon Valley could think of to do is to give us recycled computers. Wealthy elites and also just good hardworking college kids went on to making billions of dollars, and we got recycled computers. We don’t want, having already fought the digital divide in the ’90s, to now have to deal with an eco divide.”

Federal govt to dictate: “The change has got to be top down, bottom up, and inside out. The federal government has to get off the bench. Or frankly the federal government has to put down its pompoms for the polluters and put on the cleats and get on the side of our team trying to solve this problem. That’s critical. Otherwise, we’re going to have patchwork solutions, every state, every city going its own way.”

On carbon tax: “First you’ve got to have a green economy. Then you’ve got to make it just and inclusive. You’ve got to put a price on carbon; that’s got to be a top priority for the new administration…. Cap carbon. We want a radical reduction in carbon. We support Al Gore’s call for 100 percent renewable in 10 years. We think it’s the only call that makes any sense given the science. We want a really aggressive cap. We want to make the polluters pay. We don’t care if they pay by buying permits or paying taxes…. We say take the money from the carbon proceeds, whether it’s carbon taxes or a sale at auction, and a cap-and-trade system and invest that money in jobs, transportation, and new technology….”

On changing capitalism: “The first step is going from just grey, dirty, suicidal capitalism that doesn’t even try to take account of any sustainability at all to a form of capitalism that does.”

On a green elite: “there is nothing inherently just or inclusive about eco-capitalism or green capitalism. In fact, we are already seeing the emergence of a very small, affluent and mostly white eco-elite. Members of this small group are benefiting from the organic food, hybrid cars, solar panels, what have you – because they can afford to pay a green premium and buy into a green lifestyle.”

The call for a green New Deal: “To earn the support of people of color and working class people, the mainstream, affluent enviros must ensure that a broad swath of the American people can share more equitably in the benefits and burdens, risks and rewards, of a shift to clean energy. We need a green “new deal” – under which the green business community holds itself to higher standards of equal opportunity and labor friendliness, in exchange for support from a broader section of American society.”

Stimulus dollars for green jobs: “We want to focus on a campaign for ‘winter jobs’ in the green economy. These jobs would come from the federal government making funds available for workers to weatherize and retrofit millions of homes, across the country…by blowing in eco-friendly insulation, replacing ill-fitting windows with double-glazed glass and plugging holes with caulk guns. Then people can actually save money this winter…. We are calling for the economic stimulus package (which Speaker Pelosi wants Congress to pass after the election) to be a Green Recovery Act, focused on retrofitting American homes and businesses to conserve energy.”

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In the quote from 10-14-08, “The Call for a green New Deal” he distinctly separates “people of color” and “working class people” in the first sentence. Is it his contention that there are no working class people among people of color or rather that people of color do not work? Over the years, I have had many friends and work associates who fit both categories simultaneously. Huh? I guess when you’re educated at Yale and by Mao’s “Little Red Book” you see things much differently.

Somebody call Obama and tell him there is still some room under the bus.